1. Field
The present application relates generally to an online market for sales leads, and, more particularly, to adjusting price for a sales lead in the online market.
2. Related Art
A sales lead represents potential customers for companies in particular markets for particular goods and/or services. A sales lead typically describes a potential customer, and includes information such as a name, address, social security number, and income.
Sales leads can be gathered from the Internet by other companies, which are referred to as “sales lead generators.” Sales lead generators may gather sales leads by, for example, performing Internet searches with specialized search strings. As another example, if a person searches for “auto financing” in a search engine, the person is identified as a sales lead because they are looking for auto financing. The sales lead generators may then sell the sales leads to companies in the relevant markets.
As an example, the automobile financing market involves matching potential automobile buyers with lenders that provide credit on terms acceptable to the potential automobile buyers. Automobile dealers often act as intermediaries between automobile buyers and lenders when selling automobiles, and often have their own financing departments. The dealers are interested in acquiring sales leads that identify potential automobile buyers who are also candidates for financing. Such sales leads may represent applications for credit or for sales of other types. Sales leads have a monetary value to automobile dealers, and the dealers may buy and sell the leads in an online market. The dealers are therefore buyers of sales leads for automotive financing. A sales lead is also referred to as an application or “app” in the auto-financing market because a sales lead is often associated with a credit application by a person interested in purchasing a car.
“A sales lead provider” is a company that buys sales leads from sales lead generators and sells the sales leads to buyers such as automobile dealers and wholesale buyers. Multiple sales lead providers compete to buy and sell the sales leads.
Sales leads can be sold online using a ping/post system as shown in FIG. 1. The sales leads may be sold exclusively, so that a seller only sells the sales lead to one buyer. The seller 102, or “source”, sends to the buyer A 104, buyer B 106, and buyer C 108 a “ping,” which can include demographic information that characterizes the sales lead. The demographic information may include, for example, a zip code and, in some examples, a Social Security number and an income. Buyer A 104, buyer B 106, and buyer C 108 can then respond with an indication of whether they are interested in the sales lead. Depending on the technology of the seller and the buyers, the buyer may respond with a price or a “tier” that corresponds to a price.
Three response types may be sent in the example system of FIG. 1. In the first type, sent to buyer A 104, fixed price (standard), the response is Success or Failure, and the price is static and predetermined. In the second type, tier, which is sent to buyer B 106, the response is Success or Failure. On Success a Tier number is returned, and the tier number corresponds to a price. In the third type, price, sent to buyer C 108, the response is Success/Failure. On Success a price in dollars and cents is returned.
After all buyer responses are returned, the seller selects a buyer to whom the seller will offer the sales lead for sale at the price indicated, implicitly or explicitly, by the buyer's previous ping response. This offer is referred to as a “post”. The selection of a buyer may be based on price, post conversion, a “buddy system” or other factors. Post conversion is determined by the number of times the seller has posted to a buyer that the buyer has accepted the sales lead. On receiving the full sales lead post, the selected buyer performs validation and determines whether to accept or reject the sales lead. Validation may include checking for required fields, Social Security number validation, phone number validation, and other evaluations.
A sales lead provider such as the seller 102 competes with other sales lead providers for available sales leads. In order to buy sales leads so that it can supply buyers, the sales lead provider bids up prices, but in order to operate profitably, the sales lead provider buys the sales leads at low prices. It would be desirable, therefore, to automatically manage bids to balance supply with profits.